


An Anchor Against The Turning Tide

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Series: The Mighty Nein Go To The Beach! (Critical Role Relationship Week 2018) [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Critical Role Relationship Week 2018, Dreams, M/M, Sleepwalking, There Is More Than One Kind of Ocean, Though With Fjord Dreams Are Rarely Just Dreams, What Things Lurk Beyond The Stars?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 05:45:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14994059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Fjord had been expecting to dream about his old life aboard his ship when they had reached Port Damali weeks ago, had thought for sure he would dream of the darkest ocean depths as he slept on the beach in Nicodranas. In neither of those places did he dream about sailing or the salty sea. Instead, stretched out in a hammock with Caleb curled into his side, Fjord dreamed about somewhere else entirely, about an ocean not made from water.





	An Anchor Against The Turning Tide

_All there is at first is darkness. No. Not Darkness. Void. The absence of light. The absence of anything. He’s not sure if he’s moving, or if anything is happening around him, he is only a consciousness, devoid of substance._

_Suddenly, he’s walking. He’s been walking. He’s always been walking. The void is simply darkness now. There are shapes, if he stares hard enough, darkness moving through darkness. There’s a cold resistance around his ankles as he walks, but when he looks down he sees nothing. He looks back up. He keeps walking._

_Stars appear around him, eye-searing points of brightness in the dark, landmarks with which to judge his progress. Sometimes things move in front of the stars, creatures that look like manta rays, or like sharks, or like squid. They have too many eyes, too many mouths, too many teeth. He holds his head up and keeps walking._

_It’s getting harder to walk, the strange cold resistance is up to his knees now. It’s a test. Everything has been a test. He was supposed to have been learning something. What has he learned? He feels himself breathing hard as he fights to keep moving forward. There is someone calling his name, distant, unimportant._

_He can’t remember what he’s walking towards. Did he ever know? There’s a coldness around his chest now, darkness in front of him. There is something blocking out the starlight._

_The darkness opens an eye. He knows that eye, yellow and vast and ancient. There has always been the eye. It is all he has ever seen of his patron._

_The darkness opens another eye, another eye, another eye another eye. Each eye sheds yellow light, each yellow light falls on him, each eye sees him. There is a mouth, and another mouth, and each mouth is full of teeth, each mouth is full of words, and the words are a song that he cannot resist. The strange currents around him are no longer pushing against him, they are pulling him closer and he can see everything now and he opens his mouth to scream and the darkness rushes in the darkness drags him down the darkness tastes like salt—_

Something grabs him under the arms and pulls him to the surface of the water. Fjord coughs and gasps, his chest burning, his eyes stinging as he frantically kicks against the current. Someone has a hold of him, someone is dragging him backwards even as the sea tries to pull him forwards, and then there is sand under his feet. He tries to stand and stumbles instead, the arms around him holding him up. Together they half swim, half stumble to shallow water, and only then do the arms let him go, only to rub at his back as Fjord doubles over, coughing out the last of the seawater. After a moment, Fjord straightens and looks into Caleb’s eyes.

“What happened?” Fjord manages to say, his throat burning and raw. He asks because that is what one does in this situation, not because he doesn’t know.

“I woke up and you were gone,” Caleb says, and he is shaking. He doesn’t sound scared, but his voice sounds so steady, so precise. Fjord knows he’s keeping tight control over himself, trying not to fall apart when Fjord needs him most. “I thought maybe you had gone to take a piss or something, and I was going to roll over and go back to sleep, but then I saw something in the moonlight, the shape of someone walking into the sea. You. I didn’t even try to wake Molly, I just ran after you, calling your name. You didn’t stop walking.”

Fjord is very glad that all the girls were up at The House, having a sleepover. He doesn’t think he could handle everyone fussing over him, asking him questions. He remembers hearing someone calling in his dreams, calling for him. He had kept walking. He hadn’t listened.

“I’m sorry, I was dreaming, I—“ Fjord reaches out and pulls Caleb close, feels the man cling to him as if Fjord were an anchor. Doesn’t Caleb know that _he’s_ the one who is keeping Fjord from drifting away right now?

“I thought I was going to lose you,” Caleb says, and that’s when his voice breaks.

“I’m here,” Fjord says, and kisses Caleb as if to prove it to the man and to himself all at once, desperate, frantic kisses with assurances in between. “I am here, you saved me, I’m all right.” He leans his forehead against Caleb’s and closes his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Fjord can still see his patron in the darkness behind his eyelids, all eyes and teeth and mouths. He had been scared in the dream, yes, but his mind had not broken at the sight. Fjord has the sense that his patron is pleased by this, that another test has been passed.

 _I’m not going anywhere,_ Fjord says again, silently.

Something laughs in the back of Fjord’s mind, something ancient that was born before time, before stars. Fjord shuts out the sound, focuses instead on the sound of the surf sliding over the sand, of Caleb’s body in his arms, and lets love anchor him to the here and now.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm angel-ascending over on Tumblr if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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